In yesterday’s comments, Rob over at robknits mentioned her favorite baby socks. I went and had a look (although I didn’t get there until this morning - for some reason, my browser kept freezing up when I tried to access that particular .pdf!) and they really are cute as can be:
I have also started Daisy, one of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s contributions to Knitty’s on-line magazine. I’m not sure how I feel about it just yet so am not certain whether or not it’s got a long life span on my needles :) Time will tell!
Barb-in-east-texas also sent a link for the Loving Memories Lacy Bunting from Lionbrand. It’s a beautiful piece, and though I grow faint at the idea of shaping, set-in sleeves and button-bands, it is so charming I may give it a whirl anyways.
About the diet - I was astounded that none of my doctors had any suggestions as to what kind of diet I should undertake nor had anything to say about what I should eat or not eat. So I put my own regimen together (not that any of them have asked - I could be eating nothing but bananas for all they know) and seem to be doing reasonably well with it. It’s basically a 1500 calorie/day diet, very low in fat, sugar and sodium. Typically, breakfast is a cup of non-fat, no sugar yogurt and fruit of some kind. Lunch is often a tuna sandwich (lite bread and low-fat mayonnaise) and a cup of soup with another fruit. Dinner is a piece of boneless, skinless chicken breast or low-fat fish (mahi-mahi is seriously wonderful and has only about 100 calories per 4 oz!) and a vegetable or two, sometimes a potato. If we’ve had a busy day (like yesterday when we ran around from 8:00 AM to about 6:00 PM), we’ll have a Lean Cuisine entrée. To my vast surprise, this stuff doesn’t taste like “diet” food, but like real food. The Swedish Meatballs are awesome and Myria is quite fond of their little pizzas. We also budget for a small late supper which, for me, is usually oatmeal with another fruit of some kind. In the cold weather, something warm in my tummy before going to bed really helps getting to sleep. That will probably change as the weather warms up and I begin to feel more kindly about salads (don’t really want cold meals in the cold weather).
Our biggest assets in this endeavor are our George Foreman Grill and our Oster Steamer.
The grill is fairly new to us but we’ve had a steamer for years. I was never particularly big on vegetables until Myria started cooking them in this.
We also keep a little bowl of sugar-free hard candy on the kitchen counter. Life-Savers “Sorbet” are particularly toothsome morsels and Baskin-Robbins chocolate mints aren’t too shabby either. Best of all, they are only 7 or 8 calories apiece. One or two a day isn’t going to hurt anything :) And we have sugar-free jello from time to time but we aren’t really big on dessert as a rule.
And that’s about it! It’s difficult sometimes to ignore pizza and ice cream and a big fat hamburger covered with cheddar cheese and bacon but it’s not as difficult as I thought it would be. Myria is a good cook and a creative one and that’s a tremendous benefit for a diet!
Oh, one more thing - I keep a diet-journal. It lives on the kitchen table and everything that goes into my mouth gets logged - along with its calorie count. Also what I weigh that morning. I do find it useful for tracking and it helps me to stay honest. Maybe not for everyone, but an asset for me, definitely!
Knitting Chatters is on for tomorrow evening! The doors will open at 7:30 PM, EST. Virtual coffee and cookies will be provided :) Hope to see you there!
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the little bunting works up quickly and it is interesting enough to take the ‘sting’ from the fiddly bits- i do wonder why the lion brand site only has a drawing of it though- i’ve made it over and over again- it’s kinda my standard gift for ‘special’ babies (well, all babies are special, so let’s just blame my lack of vocabulary for how that sounded, okay?)
ah, i do look forward to summer fruits and veggies- there just isn’t any substitute for having them grown at least semi-locally and not picked unripe and shipped long distance-
it sounds like you are practicing healthy eating instead of dieting- congrats!
stay happy-
Barb - Healthy eating - yeah, that’s pretty much it. Myria and I expect our colons to go on strike and demand pizza any moment now! Heheh…
I’ve been reading for a while, but this is my first time commenting. :)
Good for you with your healthy eating program! I need to get back to mine. It’s been a bad month so far.
I just wanted to mention that you should be careful eating tuna too often. Tuna can have a pretty high mercury content, and eating it too often can be Very Bad. There’s a chart here:
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/tuna.asp
That shows how much tuna is safe to eat depending on a person’s weight.
Hi Robbyn: yay for healthy eating. My diabetes educators say to work on the 80-20 rule. If you’re doing it right 80% of the time, you’re doing great. So go ahead and have the pizza once in a while, just don’t stock it in the house. I make Greek pizza with sundried tomatoes, calamata olives and feta cheese, plus whatever other veggies strike my fancy—divine! Do try it.
amaryllis
Kim - Thanks for the link, but I’ve got to ask - if this stuff is so dangerous, why is it still on the shelves in the supermarket - in such quantity? Supermarkets out to quietly poison the population? I can think of worse ways to go :)
Robbyn - if you like mahi mahi, you’ll love talapia. Try cooking it on a griddle with a shake or two of lite Italian dressing. Best wishes! Jo Ellyn
Amaryllis - LOL - thanks for the recipe but I think I’ll hold off for a while yet. We have a Greek pizzeria locally and they make absolutely the best I’ve ever had. I’m saving that treat for when I pass a certain milestone :)
Jo Ellyn - You’re right - I do love tilapia :) Lovely, lovely stuff! (wipe, wipe) - Oh great, you’ve made me drool!
Hi Robbyn, The Daisy sweater is a bit too plain (all that stockinette) to keep my interest, but the nice thing about baby sweaters is how quickly they are done! About food—steamers are wonderful, and the vegetable dishes produced by steaming bear no resemblance to the canned stuff we ate as kids! I also do the light Italian salad dressing on vegies, and put lemon on almost everything—amazing what it can do for a piece of chicken. I have to remember to try the tilapia and mahi mahi. I also have to remember that I can’t eat unless I put down the knitting and spinning, and who would want to do that!
Rob - Well, I’m having size (not gauge, I’m on gauge) issue with “Daisy” and haven’t decided what to do yet.
Knitting/spinning or eating? Oooh, tough choice!
